Goodbye Tess

Rosie's mama, Tess went to the bridge yesterday.  She was 14, a good innings for a Lab.  A big, big thank you to lovely Alana and the caring vet nurses at Eastern Hills Vets.   They were so lovely and really helped mum and I say goodbye to Tess and send her off as peacefully and lovingly as possible.

Poor mum.  Both of these blithe and sweet spirits are gone now.

Tess, mum and Jock.

 I'm glad she still has Tess's grandson, Angus, to comfort her.  He'll miss his grandma too. They were great friends.

And I have Tess's daughter and granddaughter here too, and my sister Jen has her son, Kelly.

Tess had two litters.  She was a very kind mama, always looking after her babies so well.

 

Tess and mum had a lot of fun doing retrieving trials and training together.

Here they are with Tess's son, Rosie's brother, Inky, at training.  Inky became a retrieving trial champion but Tess never quite managed her two wins at all-age level to get her championship.  She had ten qualifying finishes though, so she got her All-Age Retrieving Dog title, no easy feat.

 
She and mum also got their CD and CDX in obedience.

In retrieving, she never quite had the drive she needed to push on if things got a little big hard. That was part of who she was.  She was the gentlest dog you can imagine.  She never had a beef with anyone, human or dog.  Sometimes I think she'd have liked to be an only dog, because she was a little retiring, and got pushed out by the other big doggy personalities in the family, and only really learned to ask for attention as she got older.

Tess is at the back with Freya and Tam.  Front is L to R: Rosie, Kelly, Jock, Buffy, and Kate.

But she did enjoy her big goofy grandson a lot.

She learned to be positively snuggly in her old age.  My two younger nieces got on with her really well and she loved them especially too.  They'll be sad that she's gone.

She liked a cuddle when she was over at our place being minded too. 

She was very much a part of our family and will continue to be so through the legacy of her pups and grandpups.

When a dog has been old for a long time, it can be hard to remember when they were young and bouncy.  She had her silly times too. 

And she was a very lively and alert dog for most of her life.

We'll all miss her sweet spirit very much, especially mum.

Run free, sweet Tessa Bessa.  xxx 

 

Our Labrador Babies Are Six!

How did that happen?

Mama Rosie, Baby Angus, Baby Tuppy, Grandma Lynne, Grandma Tess.

Seems like only yesterday that these two beauties, and all their brothers, were being born.

Pretty sure this is baby Angus, or Rocket as he was promptly named on his birthday, because he came out so fast, right behind another puppy.

Yes she's on the couch. She had them all on the couch, apart from one puppy that she had when she was supposed to be outside for a quick wee!  Yes of course we had a lovely whelping box for her.  She preferred the couch!

I'm sure Tuppy is in this one, but I can't honestly remember who wore what bit of yarn, and telling black lab pups apart from a photo is impossible!

Rosie looks so young in that photo.  I guess we all looked younger!  Luckily, we're all wiser now too, to make up for it.  :D

The usual dog-photographing chaos ensues!

Ah well, in other news, this was one of my writing spots this week:

Ahhhhh!

37 000 words written by the end of this week.  Almost at halfway!  A Firey friend has started reading 'Chicken Soup For Satan' and told me he's really enjoying it, and to hurry up and get the sequel finished.  I'm working on it, young Drew!  :D

This morning, we put on our comms brigade hats and went and did a rural urban interface exercise with a combo of a lot of brigades.  It was pretty chaotic at first.
 

But we soon got it all sorted out and the Fireys went out to do assessments of house defendability, then to set up house defense, as the huge imaginary fire got closer.  I got to try a new job; being scribe for the Operations Officer.  It was really interesting and fast-paced and I got to listen in on all of the planning, which was cool. If you don't think you can fight fires, there are plenty of other jobs you could be doing in a local brigade!

At the end, we all came back together for a debrief.  It was great to know so many people there, and I really enjoyed the human interaction.  There are so many lovely people in the Firey organisations!

I always like seeing the mix of uniforms at these big things!

That's me in the blue at the back there.  Love our blue shirts!  That's Max who i'm talking to there. Max is an ex-captain, a whizz on the radio, and a kind teacher, and I learn a lot from him. 

Tom, who took the pic, was amused by the 'no standing' sign on the tarmac there.  Glad to see others enjoy these little quirky moments in life! 

Tonight we go to our brigade annual dinner, and I am looking forward to seeing my good friends there.

Tomorrow I go to Just Add Passion for the Stoneville fete, and will be there signing books and networking with my fellow authors.  If you are a local, come by and say hello!  We're friendly, I assure you! 



   

A Day Late Again!

I'm sure you'll forgive me.  It is hard fitting double house duty plus hospital visits.  Yes mum is back in there.  This time a gall-stone got lose and made mum go yellow!  Blimey!  Off to the hospital again!  She seems to have moved the stone on her own, thank goodness, and might be able to come home today, but at least it means they will bump up her gallbladder removal.  It is pretty obvious to us at least that she will never manage to get to the 4 to 6 weeks they were wanting.

Once you get into emergency departments it is like entering an alternate dimension. You just have to give yourself up to the odd sense of time they have there, because you know it is going to be a long time before you get out again, even when you aren't the patient.  There has been lots of time to people-watch, and of course the nature of hospitals means you get to see lots of what they call the mad, the bad and the sad, and to feel very lucky.

A google search for 'the mad the bad and the sad' turned up this interesting image by illustrator, Melinda Gebbie. Yep, that's close enough to some of the people we saw in the ED!  

Adding a bit more stress to a life always means other crappy things happen because your attention is distracted.  Poor Andrew had a serious water event while I was off at the hospital yesterday.  He got distracted by a visitor looking for mum and left the washing up water running.   Oh oh!   The floor of the cottage is anything but level, so water went in all directions and the sink cupboard was soaked and had to be gutted.   We're blowing a fan in there to dry it out and hopefully avoid mold. 

One good thing that came out of this was that, since the kitchen rug was soaked, we decided it was a perfect time to give it a good clean.  Blimey, those power washers are good value aren't they!  I've never seen it so clean since it was new.  I'd forgotten how much I like the pattern.  :D

We've been walking all four dogs too.  Angus gets to stay on the long lead because otherwise he and Tuppy run too far afield, egging each other on, and since he isn't our dog, he feels that recalls are optional.   

At 13, Grandma Tess still does pretty well but she gets a bit tired if we go too far.  She does plenty of 'old dog sleeping' these days.

Angus just does weird sleeping.  How can this be comfortable?

Right now he is beside me in the cat's bed.  Perhaps not so much in as partly on!

He's such a dag!  He's a sooky boy too.

It's nice to have a snuggler around, even if it does feel like he has a thousand pointy elbows when he climbs up to be near (or on) you.  At nearly 40 kilos, that's a lot of elbow!   

 
 

Winter Colds and Spring Flowers,

We're still snotty here and still minding mum's two snuggly Yellow Labs, so there's been a lot more of this:

And some of this too.  Angus loves to snuggle on the bed but he is totally crap at it.  It's elbows to the nose and feet to the kidneys all the way.   

Which reminds me of this meme, which always amuses me because it's true, for some dogs at least.

We've been staggering outside for little walks and up to the block too, just a bit later when the air is warmer.  We had a bit of a rainy one up at the block the other day.  Man, drying off four Labs by toweling them off is better than a gym workout!

We know that spring is just around the corner because the Wattles, Hakeas and Lucerne trees are all flowering.  I just love the cascading habit of the Lucerne trees.

The bees love them too.  It's good to know we can help them get through the winter by having so much early-flowering goodness available for them. 

I managed to write my novel words all last week so am very proud of myself for keeping that going, snot and all.  Music playing had to be curtailed to pure music as any attempts to sing caused coughing, but I did play every day, still, lyre and guitar most days.  Am currently practicing my version of Jabberwocky so that I can be ready to video it for you, and have started work on a composition of my own about Odin and his horse, Sleipnir.  I have the chorus and one musical bridge worked out nicely but the verses, both lyrics and music, need more work.       

I did manage to keep up with my baking.  Rosie likes to sit right next to where I do my mixing in case anything yummy falls off the counter, but she ended up in the exactly the wrong place the other day when I got a bit wild with the flour.

 

Sorry baby!  And it doesn't even taste nice!
      
We had to miss Fireys this weekend due to the attack of the snot-monster but I did manage to get Sawyers Valley Volunteer Bushfire Brigade's website news done for the month. If you'd like to see what we've been up to, go here.   

Extra Labradors

We have mum's two Labbies (Rosie's mum, Tess, and Rosie's son and Tuppy's bro, Angus) staying with us this week, and we have a cold too, so there has been an awful lot of Angus being photogenic and not much else being done.

 

 He is very snuggly.

Tess likes a snuggle too.

The only person who is not enthused at the extra patronage of our laps is Mr Superkitty!   :D

Humph!